THE MIDDLE ENGLISH "PSEUDO-TURPIN CHRONICLE"

Abstract

Because this article introduces an unpublished and little-known Middle English text, it engages necessarily in a diverse set of enquiries. As a consequence, the article is divided into sections which consider (I) the manuscript, (II) a history of the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle as it originated on the Continent, (III) the relationship of the Middle English text, as a translation, to other translations and versions - especially those found in Britain and Ireland - and (IV) the literary and thematic distinctions of the Middle English text. In anticipation of the third and fourth sections, it is worth keeping in mind that many of the events related in the Pseudo-Turpin are linked with those of the chansons deg,este of Charlemagne (the so-called `Matter of France). Received scholarly opinion has tended to suggest that when this kind of material found its way into Middle English the circumstances were forced, the results regrettable: The English Charlemagne romances ... give the impression that they were written ... by writers who were driven to this somewhat uncongenial material by [an] insatiable demand for romances.' The English Charlemagne romances are in the main undistinguished, to say the least.2 The matter of France [is] the source of nine of the dreariest and most contemptible pieces.' Some of the Middle English Charlemagne texts are indeed of questionable merit, but others, when looked at more closely, are without doubt the work of intelligent authors and translators very much engaged with their material;4 and it can be shown that the Middle English Pseudo-Turpin belongs with the better examples. More importantly, perhaps, it can also be shown that the piece reveals - albeit subtly - evidence for the proposition that much of the English matter of France emanated from a well-established and flourishing Insular textual tradition. There may be evidence, moreover, for a distinctly English tradition regarding certain moralistic parts of the chronicle. The Middle English Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle is preserved uniquely in San Marino, Henry E. Huntington Library, MS HM zS,561. The manuscript, dating from the late fifteenth century, comprises a large collection of Middle English texts, the most voluminous of which is John Trevisa's translation of Higden's Polychronicon; that text includes alphabetical subject indexes in Latin and English and Trevisa's own `Dialogue between a Lord and a Clerk upon Translation' with the pendant 'Epistle' to his patron Thomas, fourth Lord Berkeley (fols 24'-3 I 9'). Also found in the manuscript are Trevisa's translations of the Dialogus inter militem et clericum (fols 1'-Ov) and Fitzralph's Defensio curatorum (fols 5--20); there is also another translation, perhaps by Trevisa, of The Beginning of the World and the End of Worlds, attributed to Methodius (fols z i'-z33. There are also some 115 Latin verses on the kings of England from Alfred to Henry VI (fol. 3zo', followed by some Latin tracts on each of the kings of England from Richard II to Edward IV (fols 320V-3 ; 3 z 5 is ruled, otherwise blank). The Pseudo-Turpin is the last item, occupying fols 326`-337. At least five scribes were at work on the whole manuscript; all use late anglicana or secretary scripts which date from the second half of the fifteenth century. Parchment is used throughout and the pages are large, measuring about 38omm x 227 mm. Margins are ample, with the area of text taking up about z6gmm x 176mm across two columns. In the portion of the manuscript preceding the PseudoTurpin there are forty lines per column. In the same portion, decoration starts out lavishly, with a number of pages rendered with gilt and coloured full foliate borders and illuminated initials, and other pages have similar but less extensive adornment; several pages, however, show decoration in various stages of incompletion, and all decoration is abandoned by fol. I 3 8'. The Pseudo-Turpin begins on a new gathering of eight bifolia, and carries over into another such gathering, the last four folios of which are lost; as a result, the text breaks off soon after beginning its twenty-sixth chapter, two words into a new phrase (`and anone . …